Sunday, 16 March 2014

Malaysian PM confirms that deliberate acts were involved in the plane’s disappearance

Any terrorist seizure of the plane ‘would have required one hell of a piece of planning

Flight MH370 weighs 250 tonnes, spans more than
60 metres and has been hunted by search teams from more than a dozen
countries, but after more than a week the search for missing Malaysian
Airlines jet is becoming vastly bigger. And vastly more complicated,
amid suggestions of a “deliberate act” to take it off course.

The expansion came after leaked reports from US officials,
suggestions of terrorism and the revelation from Malaysia's Prime
Minister that investigators believed new satellite data showed
“deliberate action by someone on the plane” had flown the aircraft and
it's 239 passengers and crew of course for up to seven hours.

Speaking
at a press conference in the Malaysian capital, Najib Razak said:
“Clearly, the search for MH370 has entered a new phase. Over the last
seven days, we have followed every lead and looked into every
possibility… we hope this new information brings us one step closer to
finding the plane.”

He added that, based on the data,
investigators were now pursuing the belief that the plane's last
location was along one of two possible corridors or arcs - a northern
route stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to
northern Thailand, or a southern one stretching from Indonesia to the
vast emptiness of the Indian ocean.

And
as police raided homes of the pilot and co-pilot, the Prime Minister
said that, while investigators were still exploring “all possibilities”,
attention was increasingly being focused on the possible role of the
passengers or crew of the plane

This weekend Malaysian officials, along with experts from the
US National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation
Administration, and Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch,
continue to refine the new data, which originated from signals sent by
the plane via the British company Inmarsat's satellite network over the
Indian Ocean. The Independent on Sunday understands that these
signals came from a “failsafe” function of an Inmarsat Swift 64
communications system fitted to the ill-fated aircraft.

The
announcement by Mr Najib was the most definitive suggestion that
investigators were exploring a possible hijacking or terrorism.

Aviation consultant Chris Yates said: “It's increasingly clear that
the hand of some form of terrorism is at play here, whether from a group
or one skilled individual. The levels of specialist aviation knowledge
on display here cause me to cast my mind back to 9/11 when hijackers had
acquired a level of technical and flight training.”

David Gleave,
a former air crash investigator, added that any terrorist seizure of
the plane “would have required one hell of a piece of planning”.

The
home of Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, the first officer on the missing
Malaysia Airlines flight, about 15 miles west of Kuala Lumpur. Credit
Lai Seng Sin/Associated Press

Police drove to the residential
compound in Kuala Lumpur where the missing plane's pilot Fariq Abdul
Hami lives, according a guard and local reporters

Phil Giles, a former air safety investigator who worked on the
Lockerbie Bombing, said: “Taking over a Boeing 777 without experience or
skill is akin to some Somalian bloke in a tiny boat trying to take over
a super tanker and captain it. Unless the hijacker has a fair amount of
technical and aviation knowledge he would have to rely on putting a gun
to the pilot's head.”

In Malaysia this new information meant an
end to the search in the South China Sea and a renewed focus on the
Indian Ocean. At the same time officials were continuing to get radar
data and other relevant information from the countries whose air space
the two routes being examined pass through. The northern corridor would
trace a busy route, passing northern Thailand and Burma and entering
into China on the way towards central Asia.

The southern route, meanwhile, would pass over Indonesia and then the open waters of the southern Indian Ocean. The New York Times
reported that officials believed the southern corridor to be the most
likely to have been taken by the plane. “The US Navy would not be
heading toward Kazakhstan,” a person briefed on the investigation told
the paper.

Other have suggested the complexity of the search and
sensitivity of military radar and satellite information may have been a
cause of delay, pointing to the fact that American newspapers have been
briefed by the Pentagon and that the destroyer USS Kidd and a P-8
Poseidon search plane moved into the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal prior
the Malaysian government's announcement on Saturday.

Tony Cable,
an investigator who worked for the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch
for 32 years, said: “The sensitivity of some of the military radar and
satellite information here is clearly posing a problem for the
investigation…. I suspect there is an awful lot more information that is
known that is not being released.”

The last confirmed location of
MH370 on civilian radar off Malaysia was at 1.31am last Saturday, about
40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
At that point it was heading north-east across the mouth of the Gulf of
Thailand on what should have been a six-hour flight to Beijing.

After
that it seemed the plane disappeared from civilian radar but showed up -
as a blip - on radar used by the Malaysian military. The latest
revelation shows that the Boeing 777 continued to leave the faintest
traces, in a series of “pings” from its Inmarsat Swift 64 system.

This
20-year-old communications is device fitted to 90 per cent of the
world's wide body jet aircraft and in the case of MH370 enhanced the
operation of the aircraft's flight transponder and Aircraft
Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), both of which
were deliberately deactivated early in the flight.

The IoS understands
that the disabling of the ACARS system enabled a failsafe “ping” mode
in the Swift 64 system, which has been compared to an “I'm here”
announcement. The last of these messages came at 8.11am local time last
Saturday, more than seven-and-a-half hours after it took off.

When fully operational Flight MH370's ACARS and Swift 64 only offer very basic altitude and location information and The IoS
understands the aircraft wasn't fitted with more sophisticated
equipment on sale, which would have allowed investigators to gain a full
GPS fix.

Communication between the aircraft and satellites is
only possible when the plane is airborne and the final transmission
however would have come towards the very end of flight MH370's endurance
- officials in Kuala Lumpur said the plane was carrying sufficient fuel
for 8 hours.

However through analysis of the position and view
of the receiving geostationary Inmarsat satellite over the Indian Ocean
has allowed officials to plot a “rough calculation” of the two “arcs”
the plane may have taken, which has led to increased search emphasis on
the Indian Ocean and wild speculation the aircraft may have travelled as
far as Kazakhstan.

The revelations were reportedly welcomed by
relatives of the passengers in China, who believe the development keeps
alive the hope they may somehow be reunited with their loved ones.
However the government in Beijing - which has 153 citizens on board the
flight - urged Malaysia to continue providing it with “thorough and
exact information” on the search, state news agency Xinhua said.

PETALING JAYA: As investigators search for clues about the person who
turned off MH370’s communications system, police are looking into the
crew and passengers again, this time paying close attention to those
with aviation expertise.

Intelligence sources said
investigations would include political and religious leanings, as well
as travel patterns of those on board.

Minute details, such as
hobbies and behavioural patterns, will also be put under the microscope
as the investigations now focused on hijack.

Yesterday afternoon, a group of policemen conducted a search at Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s house in Shah Alam.

Three policemen in an MPV were seen at the gated community in Section 13 at around 2.40pm. They left at 4.45pm.

It was unclear if they took away a flight simulator from the house.

Malaysia Airlines employees said a few pilots did have flight
simulators in their homes but claimed that Capt Zaharie’s was one of the
most impressive sets.

Capt Zaharie had previously posted on German online forum X-Sim.de that he had built a flight simulator himself.

“About a month ago I finished assembly of FSX and FS9 with 6 monitors,”
read his message, which was signed off as Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah
Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines in November 2012.

Checks revealed
that FSX and FS9 are over-the-counter flight simulator games made by
Microsoft. These can easily be bought online.

According to some family friends, Capt Zaharie’s family had moved
out a few days ago after MH370 went missing.

According to MAS
employees, a driver had told them that Capt Zaharie kept to himself
while being driven to the KLIA for the flight.

He had studied aviation at the Philippine Airlines Aviation School in Pasay City in 1980.

He joined Malaysia Airlines a year later.

The Penangite became a captain in the early 1990s and has 18,360 flying hours under his belt.

His colleagues described him as a jovial and professional “aviation
geek” who collected remote-controlled miniature aircraft, light twin
engine helicopters and amphibious aircraft.

Outside of aviation,
he runs a YouTube channel dedicated to DIY projects, where he teaches
viewers how to fix home appliances like air-conditioners.

The
same group of policemen also conducted a search at MH370 co-pilot Fariq
Abdul Hamid’s house a few hours after searching Capt Zaharie’s house.

Police arrived at Fariq’s house at Section 7 here around 8.05pm and left about an hour later.
It was unclear if anything was taken from the house.